Making the Case to Ban Factory Farms

Everyone deserves to trust that the food they eat is healthy. Moreover, clean water and a safe and vital environment is paramount to our health and to growing healthy food now and in the future. And for these reasons, as well as social ones, why we must ban factory farms.

Factory farms are at the center of our increasingly dangerous industrialized food system. This system — consolidated into a shrinking cadre of powerful corporations — is making it difficult for almost everyone to access healthy food. And it is eradicating clean water sources for those living in farming “sacrifice zones” and jeopardizing waters far beyond these immediately impacted areas. In short, these operations threaten clean water and healthy food now and for the long term.

Solutions seem hard to imagine, but banning factory farms is the place to start. They are at the crux of the problem. And without them the entire food system could be healthier for everyone.

Below is the recording of our recent webinar, "Factory Farms: The Case for a Ban!" Our presenters are Patty Lovera, Assistant Director of Food & Water Watch and Food & Water Policy Director, Krissy Kasserman, National Factory Farm Campaigner, and Michele Merkel, Co-Director of Food & Water Justice. Combined, they have been working for many decades advocating, organizing, and using the legal system for a better way forward for farmers, impacted communities, consumers, and the environment.

To learn more read the news piece “The Urgent Case for a Ban Factory Farms,” where you can download our full report as well as watch Michele Merkel’s TED talk on using the legal system to fight factory farming. Also, please check out our Factory Farm interactive map which shares the scope of factory farms around the country and how the industry has proliferated over a fifteen year period starting in the late 1990s.

Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold & uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people’s health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.